Fitment 68 Firebird lower front fender corner pieces and parking / turn signal lights
 

Folks,

My car has been in restoration for many years. I was trial fitting the front fenders, lower fender corner pieces, inner fender wells and parking / turn signal lights. The issue is that when I install the lights, I get a gap in the somewhat angled vertical seam between the light and the lower fender corner pieces The gap varies depending on moving the pieces around, but when the light appears to be best positioned appearance wise, the gap is between 1/16 and 1/8". The light can be repositioned a bit and so can the corner pieces because of all of the slop GM put into these pieces, but I'm still having a hard time making it look really good. I'm just wondering if any of you have done any mods to the the corner pieces to get this to look really good.

All of the pieces I'm using are either NOS GM (including the lights) or were original GM parts. I also have two sets of the GM corner pieces and they fit a bit different side to side and from pair to pair, so clearly there was a lot of variation when these were manufactured. Also, I thought that maybe the issue was the location of the parking light mounting holes on the inner fenders. That wasn't the case as I removed the inner fenders and still had the same issue. I'm wondering if I should look for another used pair of corners, modify these, buy repops or just call it good enough.

I have the ability to cut and weld in some more material on the corner pieces, so not a show stopper if I had to do some grafting, but just seems like a bad way to fix an issue like this.

Yeah, the cars of the 60's had a lot of variation

Thanks
Old Joe :oogle:

I'm not sure of the details but my understanding is that 68 parking lights all look alike but they are different between fullsize cars, midsize and Firebird. This may be your problem.

I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. The parts are all correct at least part number wise. I've looked at lots of photos over the weekend. My situation is not unique. You can close the gap easy enough by pushing the entire lamp assembly further inside the sheetmetal. Looks like that is what most people do. The issue with doing so is that it still creates a less than ideal fitment. It looks a bit like a crappy alignment job and this mostly occurs on the drivers side. Even looking at some high end restorations I see this problem. I guess with a real high end restoration, you even duplicate the factory fitment, so I suppose it makes sense.

On the other hand, I've seen some pictures where the fitment looks pretty good. So, I'm left to wonder, did someone modify the corner(s), use repops, find a set of original pieces that were formed better or ????? Now, it's also true that some of the 68s had dual bulb corner / parking lights. Is there any chance that those units fit better than factory one bulb lights?

I'm hoping someone that has had the same issue can answer this.

Well, no-one replied with a solution to the fitment, but I found multiple issues. I thought I would post what I found in case anyone else is not satisfied with the fitment of the parking / turn signal lights. In my case, I had multiple problems. Prior to disassembling my front end, my fenders had been replaced with NOS parts about 32 years ago right before I purchased the car.. When I bought the car, the GM stickers were still in the fenders. Anyway, I had purchased two sets of used corner pieces in pretty good condition during my frame off restoration. I took my time over several days comparing parts, assembling, disassembling and reassembling. I also had new NOS turn signal / parking light assemblies. purchased about 25 years ago. Stupidly, I had sold off the original light assemblies when I bought the NOS parts. First off, I found that the lenses on the light assemblies were poorly mounted on the metal housing. The thru holes on the lenses were not even close to being concentric with the holes in the metal base. There were two issues on the light assemblies alone. First, the lenses had sprues from the molding process at the ends. The sprues prevented the lenses from mounting properly and I cut them off.. Second, the screws that held the lenses in place were not 90 degrees to the base. I cut off the sprues and simply pushed sideways on the screws to square them up... Bingo!!!!! On to the fenders. Keep in mind, these were originally NOS replacements and I didn't record whether or not the light assemblies were mounted properly before dissassembly. I found that the front of the fenders by the light assemblies have corner supports spot welded in from the factory on the underside. One of them was welded in wrong and caused the inner edge where one light mounts to be cocked. I bent it in place with a screwdriver and ............ now just fine. On to the corner pieces. Variation of about 1/8" from one piece to another with respect to where the weld nuts are. That's cause there is a backside bracket that the weld nuts are on and they must have been welded in place by either trained monkeys or hungover workers. The fix is to either drill out the bracket and re-weld or slightly elongate the holes in the front splash pan.

After all that, I would say my fitment is about as good as I've seen in 8 out of 10 show cars. The best ones undoubtedly did surgery on the outer sheetmetal to make it perfect, cause it was never perfect to begin with. Now the only question I have left is whether or not the light assembly mounting screws were originally plated or phosphated. The repop screws are all plated, but not sure that's right. I'd love to hear from anyone that knows for sure.

Thanks
Old Joe

Thanks for sharing your deep-dive problem solving on this common issue Joe.

Reference...
'68 Firebird, low-mile, unrestored original. Note finish on Parking Lamp Lens Screws...

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...26814eb9_b.jpg

UPDATE: Just realized you were asking about the LAMP mounting screws.
I would agree with you. Originally these were dark grey/black phosphate as are most all front end sheet metal part fasteners.

Well even after all that tweaking, I still wanted to make it better, so I put a slit in the drivers side fender corner and bend the metal so it was nice and parallel to the light (shown above). The lamp housing is slightly drooping because not all of the screws were in it, but now the fit was really better



http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...ictureid=13900


http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...ictureid=13901

Here is the corner piece all welded up and ground down with just a tad of all metal filler in it.

http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...ictureid=13901

Now it really fits well.